


Eulogy

by badboy_fangirl



Category: Prison Break
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 12:15:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10639659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: Lincoln contemplates his desire for Gretchen.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Seasons 3 and 4, dialogue lifted from various episodes.

_The reaches opened before us and closed behind,_  
as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to  
bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and  
deeper into the heart of darkness.  
\- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

 

  
  
The first time he ever saw her, his thought had been  _I'd do her..._  
  
When she smiled at him, her eyes appraising him openly, he thought,  _And she'd love it_.  
  
Then her expression had turned flinty and she'd revealed that she wasn't just sitting at the bar he'd approached by chance.   
  
No, with Gretchen, there had always been an agenda. From the very beginning.  
  


  
  
He didn't think she knew she got under his skin, because one didn't spend as much time in prison as Lincoln Burrows had without developing a poker face.  
  
And Gretchen—Susan, as he'd thought of her then—didn’t need anything more at her advantage. Most of the time he couldn't decide if he'd rather kill her or fuck her, but when the exhaustion would overwhelm him, he’d think—fuck first, kill second, but before all of that, make sure LJ was safe.  
  
It had been an impossibility, on all counts, until the day he'd killed the guy who held a gun to Sofia's head. Sofia was everything Susan was not, their distinct opposition something he needed badly to keep him grounded in the fight for his son's life. Sofia had no idea she gave him that sort of focus but he appreciated her for it. Even when she'd held him at gunpoint, intent on double-crossing him, he'd never thought for a moment she'd do anything to harm him. She wasn't capable, no matter how much she loved James Whistler.  
  
Susan would have blown his brains out in a moment if it would benefit her. Sofia he could take down at any time. There was nothing threatening about her. There was nothing sophisticated about her. There was nothing deceptively alluring, nothing that created a feeling within him that caused him shame and anger and immense satisfaction like when he fooled Susan and her goons at the little cabin the day of the escape from Sona.  
  
Michael's plan had formulated quickly, and they'd gotten LJ back safely, and then they’d walked away. Lincoln, sure that it had finally ended, rejoiced silently that he would never see Susan again. Sofia’d almost died that day as well, but by some twist of fate, she had survived. He'd stood in her hospital room, vowing to no one other than himself that he’d stay with her; her sweetness and goodness was the only promise he had for the future—the only hope he had to drive away the darkness that had enveloped him for so long.  
  
He forgot about Susan, or at least he told himself he didn't see her catlike eyes in the darkness or her cynical lips curving upward in response to something he'd said. And certainly on the clean sheets in Sofia's warm bed, he never thought of her and her penchant for black clothing that symbolized the darkness of her heart.   
  


  
  
"Gretchen's on the team, like it or not," Michael spat as he explained that she had somehow wormed her way back into the equation—and as usual sat holding the better hand, the important pieces of information they couldn't live without.  
  
Lincoln mentally cursed her at the same moment he felt a grudging respect for her. She always landed on her feet, that bitch. With any luck at all, he'd never have to see her.   
  
Of course, when had he ever had any luck during the last three and a half years?  
  


  
  
The few times he did see her, it was once again that struggle between choking the life out of her, or bending her over first and then choking the life out of her. It didn’t matter what her list of crimes were. She made him hard and he wanted her. He wanted her the way he’d never wanted Veronica, with a violence that bordered on sick and twisted—oh, hell, who was he kidding?  
  
It was all sick and twisted. If he got the chance to do her, her ancestors would feel it, he would fuck her so hard. Maybe if he did it, he could purge the sickness out of himself, the infection of The Company that seemed to spread continually throughout his body and soul, making everything black and hopeless.  
  
And if it didn’t eradicate anything, at least he’d get to come once, inside a female body, before he died. Knowing Gretchen as he did, he figured twice in quick succession was in the realm of possibility. So maybe twice, before he died.  
  
The day he and Sucre caught her and Self selling Scylla, he could have killed her without even regretting the loss of the fuck. By then, Michael’s life hung in the balance so precariously, that he could honestly say he didn’t want her, at least not right then. But then she’d smiled, regaining the upper hand yet again, and the tightening in his groin was all too familiar.  
  
God, he was a sick, sick bastard.  
  
“So, when are we going to get this out of the way?” she asks, her conversational tone turning him around in the fancy hotel room in Miami. They’re alone. Self and Mahone and T-Bag—gone, doing whatever the hell they’re doing. For two days Lincoln has been saying to himself, and to Michael, and now to Sara, that if they could just do this, and give Scylla back, then they’d be free. But he doesn’t really believe it; he just can’t deal with what it will be when it’s over. If he thinks much past this very minute, he fears he might turn the gun on himself just to have it over with.  
  
So he never thinks past this very minute.  
  
“What?” he asks, though he knows exactly what she’s talking about.  
  
“After all the mercenary humps I’ve thrown at guys in my lifetime, I think I’m due for what I want.”  
  
She stands up and walks over to him, and he gives her a look that says everything he  _should_  be thinking, everything he  _should_  actually feel. His disgust, his amazement that she could even be thinking about such a thing at a time like this, but the reality is, if the door hadn’t opened just then, and she hadn’t gotten that annoyed expression on her face at the interruption, he’d probably have had his pants around his ankles and his cock inside her in about five seconds flat.  
  
Because he’s sure she never wears underwear. She’s that kind of woman. The kind that makes it easy on everyone, at least in one department.  
  
God, what ecstasy that would be. To have it out of the way, as she said. To see if that would be enough. He had to believe that’s all he wanted. He sure as hell  _needed_  it, but he hasn’t been able to get his hands on what he needs in such a long time, he’s not even sure he’d do it right if he had the opportunity.  
  
It rings in his ears, even after Mahone starts explaining what they’ve found. She wants him—Lincoln Burrows. She doesn’t classify him like all the— _mercenary humps?_ —she categorizes him as something she wants, something she’s due. He fights a smile, trying to focus on what Alex is saying. The woman has a way with words, no doubt.   
  
Oh, he would still kill her in a heartbeat, and he knows she wouldn’t hesitate to take him out if it suited her purposes. But the fucking would come first, for both of them. He is strangely comforted by this realization.  
  
It’s only two hours later when he stands over her wilted body, his gun in her face, his anger supplanting his lust for her. T-Bag’s words about her having a kid doesn’t make Lincoln more sympathetic towards her, it makes him hate her more as he remembers how she terrorized him at LJ’s expense.   
  
Being able to be both sides of the same coin—Gretchen is someone’s mother and also capable of double crossing the double crossers—makes Lincoln’s head spin. He is also this, now. It’s been growing and developing for months, the warring desires in his head, the ludicrousness of the one juxtaposed with the righteousness of the other.  
  
It makes him hate himself more when he doesn’t kill her. Mahone’s softly spoken words—“We’re not them,”—doesn’t talk him off the ledge either. Lincoln  _is_  them, now, and he isn’t. He knows it deep down inside himself where nothing else can penetrate. No more lies that he’s told himself, or Michael, or LJ.   
  
He is both Gretchen’s enemy, and her almost-lover. He is what brings The Company to its knees, and what makes it fix his brother.  
  
He is what his parents were. He no longer wishes to fight it, either.   
  
And like the cat in heat that she is, when Gretchen turns back up again, he won’t hesitate. He will fuck her, and then he will kill her.

 


End file.
